


So Black it Shines

by soliduck



Series: Pucks in the Dark [1]
Category: Blades in the Dark (Roleplaying Game), Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Case Fic, Criminal AU, Demons, Ghosts, M/M, Magic, Noble Jack, Occultist Jack, Peril, Thief Bitty
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-09-20 09:29:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17020122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soliduck/pseuds/soliduck
Summary: Jack is an occultist who just wants to solve his father's disappearance. Eric is a thief who just wants to do right by his mentor and help his friends. Together, they might be the only hope the sunless city of Duskwall has.~0~This is an AU Fusion of Ngozi Ukazu's web-comic "Check Please!" with the setting from the role-playing game "Blades in the Dark" by John Harper. You don't need to know anything about either of them to (hopefully) enjoy this, but I highly recommend checking them out! They're some of my favorite things.Thanks to Kirani for the beta!





	1. Beginnings

"And the headlight spirits   
They lead me down the Styx   
So black it shines"

-Mitski, "Carry Me Out"

 

Eric paused for a few heartbeats in the darkness of the late afternoon and peered from the top of the warehouse across a narrow alleyway to where a pair of double doors opened onto a small balcony. He had followed this particular rooftop route countless times before, and this was the part that had the greatest risk of discovery. Eric had discerned from the lingering smell of tobacco and discarded stubs that one of the clerks that worked in the converted manor house across the alley came out on the balcony to smoke from time to time. Should fate arrange a meeting between him and said clerk one night, it would be quite plain that Eric was up to no good; he was cloaked, hooded and veiled in a black that seemed to gather the shadows around him, armed with pistol and dagger and laden with the tools of a burglar.

 

Something the clerk might not realize until after Eric had vanished back into the night that always shrouded the sunless city of Duskwall, is that he carried no light with which to see in the darkness. There were numerous old wives’ tales about people who could see in the dark; it was said that ever since the Cataclysm shattered the sun, some people were born with dark gifts and darker hearts, and were driven to cruelty and murder. Eric didn’t consider himself particularly inclined to violence and was, in fact, perfectly normal until he went missing when he was thirteen. When he was found three days later with no memory of where he had been and some unsettling new abilities, it didn’t take much for the superstitious people of the Barrowcleft district to begin to whisper that he was not who he seemed. It was out of fear of what their neighbors might do that Eric’s parents agreed to apprentice him to Katya Ivankova, and so he had gone to train with her and learn the ways of the thief.

 

For the past seven years, he had dutifully learned how to prowl the rooftops silently, how to pick locks and disable magical traps, and above all, how not to be seen. He used those carefully honed skills now to vault across the alleyway to the balcony and climb silently up the drainpipe to the roof of the building. It was a three-story hollow square and constructed of stone, with a small courtyard in the center. It was typical for the Charterhall district, being both ancient and wholly given over to the bureaucracy that kept the city from sliding into anarchy. It also happened to be Eric’s preferred place to eat his dinner while he was in this district.

 

All thoughts of the hot meat pie in his satchel were set aside as Eric crested the rooftop and discovered that he was not alone. He slipped through the shadows and crouched behind one of the several chimney stacks that studded the rooftop and peered around it.

 

Two men were situated on the rooftop directly across the courtyard from him, illuminated with the harsh blue-white glow of their electroplasmic lamps. One of the men stood about a hand taller than Eric and had his back turned so that all that could be made out was his long brown hair that fell to his shoulders and the messenger bag slung across his back. He held his lamp aloft and moved it back and forth as if to ward away the darkness.

 

The second man was crouched near where Eric usually sat, and from the way his breath steamed out in a thick cloud despite the warmth of the evening, he was attuning himself to the ghost field.

 

Eric bit his lip in consternation; if this man was a skilled Whisper, someone who studied the arcane arts, he might be able to read Eric’s frequent presence on this rooftop from its echo in the ghost field.

 

 _Are these the hunters Katya has been afraid of?_ Eric settled deeper in the shadows and resolved to watch this scene play out, his trained eye picking out the details of the two men. The crouching man was handsome in a cold sort of way, with a few dark locks of hair that fell across his forehead. Except for his eyes, which looked almost colorless in the electric light, he was the image of imperial nobility, with pale skin, a chiseled jaw, and sharp cheekbones. His finely tailored waistcoat and pants reinforced the impression that he was someone from the upper classes. He was powerfully built but not visibly armed, though Eric knew that a Whisper didn’t need a weapon to be a threat.

 

Eventually, the man with the long hair turned so that Eric could see him clearly; he had a kind face, with curious green eyes and a gregarious mouth below a well-groomed mustache. Eric knew from experience that the appearance of kindness could hide a cruel heart, but he didn’t think that the obvious warmth and affection with which he regarded his companion was feigned. He didn’t seem to be armed either, but the messenger bag could easily be hiding some kind of weapon. His clothes were well made but of a rougher style; a brown jacket over a white shirt with suspenders. He seemed nervous, and absentmindedly fiddled with his lantern and smoothed the front of his jacket while he waited for his friend to finish surveying the local ghost field.

 

Eric was fairly certain, from their clothes and the careless way they stood in the open, that these men were not members of the criminal underworld like himself. The rooftops of Duskwall were the province of thieves and scoundrels, and if these men decided to make a habit of intruding so blatantly where they did not belong, they were in for a rude awakening.

 

Several minutes passed like this, as the crouching man’s distant gaze tracked unseen figments in the ghostly reflection of the city; it was silent save for the noise of people and carriages on the streets below. Finally, the man blinked and jolted as if startled awake and rose to his full height. He was even taller than his friend, who moved to stand beside him, eyes darting around the rooftop before they settled on his face with a look of concern. He stroked his neat mustache with two fingers and spoke.

 

“So, Jack? What’s the verdict?”

 

“I didn’t see him. I went back about two years, but if he came up here there’s no trace of it left. Someone else does come up here often, though.”

 

Eric’s mouth twisted with displeasure at the thought that bad luck had lead to his potential discovery by these men. Katya had been so careful to keep him separate from her affairs so that he could still move freely while she was confined to their shared lair.

 

“A clerk from the building? Or…”

 

“No.” The man, Jack, made a chopping motion with his hand, and strode up to the edge of the roof, looking down into the courtyard at the center of the building. His face betrayed no emotion other than an absolute focus, and his voice was confident. “Whoever it is, he dresses like a criminal. I think he’s involved somehow.”

 

“What does he even do up here?”

 

Jack deflated a bit and crossed his arms, perhaps in frustration, like he knew that the answer would somewhat undercut his decisive declaration. “He eats food while sitting on the edge of the roof and looks down into the courtyard.”

 

There was a pregnant pause before the other man walked up to Jack and gave him placating look and a clap on the shoulder. “If you think he’s connected then we’ll track him down. I know it seems like we don’t have much to go on now, but we’ll figure it out.”

 

Jack replied without looking at his friend in the face. “There has to be something more here, some reason that this place was in the journal.” His face hardened with resolve, and he continued, “I’m going down there and I’m going to get some answers, even if it means I have to go back all the way to the cataclysm.”

 

 _He actually sounds like he thinks he could pull that off._ Eric shivered in the dark. Anyone with a little practice could read the echoes of recent events in the ghost field, with more emotionally charged events leaving a stronger resonance. Katya had taught Eric that the ghostly reflection of Duskwall held memories of the city across the ages, but he had never heard of anyone seriously trying to peel back all eight hundred and fifty odd years to the cataclysm that formed it. _Even if you managed to channel that much energy without burning yourself out, it would be like sending up a signal flare for every ghost and Spirit Warden in the district._

 

Jack finally looked at his friend, expression softening some. “You should stay up here, Shitty. It’ll be safer. I promise I'll be careful.”

 

That promise rang false to Eric's ear, and it was confirmed as a lie by the cascade of cold prickling sensations that trailed down his neck and back. Ever since he was thirteen and he gained his night vision, his body had a visceral reaction to hearing a spoken lie. Eric considered it as much a blessing as a curse—it was invaluable in his work as a Lurk, but it placed a noticeable strain on his relationships with people who knew of this talent.

 

Now the other man, Shitty apparently, was the one to cross his arms in obvious frustration, “I made a promise to your mom, man, and Shitty Knight does not back out of his promises.” He unfolded the arm that wasn’t holding the lantern and poked Jack in the arm. ”Besides, if I’m with you, you'll be less likely to go too far and blow yourself up again.”

 

Jack rolled his eyes and his perpetually cool and focused expression lightened fractionally. “That was one time, Shits.”

 

“Yeah, well, let’s keep it that way.”

 

Shitty lifted the messenger bag over his head and set it carefully against the lip that ran around the roof of the building before both men moved to start climbing down the iron trellis that spanned the full three stories of the wall closest to them, lanterns clipped to belts so that both hands were free.

 

As much as Eric liked to look at the courtyard while he ate, it had always been a bit of a mystery to him. It supported a surprising amount of plant life, with thick grass and flowering vines climbing up the trellis; much more than should be possible in a world without sunlight. Furthermore, at some point builders had bricked over all of the windows and doors leading out to the courtyard so that it was only accessible from the roof.

 

It was like it was meant to be forgotten.

 

In the center of it stood an ancient well, dry except for when it rained. Eric had examined it closely when he first found this place, and probed it with what power he could muster, but only found old stone and carvings so weathered as to be indistinct.

 

Both men climbed quickly but with little grace, and while Eric rolled his eyes at the amount of noise they managed to make by clattering on the iron trellis, he wasn’t above using it to cover his movement around the rooftop over to where they had left their belongings.

 

It was the work of moments to get the bag open and begin rifling through its contents, and Eric didn’t feel even a twinge of hesitation in doing so. He still held onto hope that these men weren’t the ones who had attacked Katya several months ago and that their presence here was pure chance. Regardless, this Jack had probably seen his face and would be looking for him.

 

 _Time to even the score._ Inside the bag was a pistol (finely crafted), ammunition, a half-full bag of nuts (the packaging was from one of the luxury electro rail lines), identification papers and passports for two people (neither was for a Jack), a number of thick reference books on spectrology, and a leather-bound journal.

 

Eric pulled the journal out and flipped it over. Embossed on the front of a journal was the sigil of a noble house; a falcon soaring over black waves in front of a crescent moon. He knew what the ocean in the sigil meant at least; they were one of the families of leviathan hunters and owned at least one huge steam warship that sailed out onto the void sea to battle the giant demons that dwelled there. He was surprised he did not recognize the sigil, as Duskwall was the port of call for the entire fleet and he had stolen from or spied on most of the noble houses in the city during his time with Katya.

 

What looked like two electro rail tickets were stuck between the pages of the journal, and Eric carefully opened the book to take a closer look, only to be stopped cold by what he found on the pages.

 

The left page was filled with a seemingly random assortment of numbers, but the right page was dominated by a sketch of his mentor, skillfully done in black ink. If there was any doubt as to the likeness of the portrait, it was labeled beneath, simply, “Katya”.

 

Operating solo the last six months while Katya convalesced in hiding had done much to bolster Eric’s confidence in his own abilities, but as he stared helplessly at his mentor’s stern face he longed for her advice on what to do. He could confront these men; he had the high ground and both pistols, and he would know if they tried to lie to him.

 

 _And if they are enemies?_ Eric was a decent shot if it came to violence, but he was leery of picking any fight, to say nothing of one with an unknown Whisper. Truly skilled or especially reckless Whispers could call on the tempest, and it was safest to treat them all like they could summon lightning. Eric was quick, but wasn't in a hurry to run a footrace against electricity. Visions of his body, charred black and twisted by blasts of lighting danced before his eyes, and he shook himself to dispel them before he slid the journal into his pouch on his back.

 

_I’ll bring the book to Katya and make her finally explain what’s going on. The time for secrets is over._

 

Eric was wrenched from his introspection by a blast of cold air and a shout of “Jack!” from the courtyard, and he turned his attention to the scene below.

 

Jack stood at the center of the courtyard, his back to Eric, with one hand extended over the well. From the way his breath bloomed in a white cloud, it was clear that he had thrust his consciousness deep into the ghost field. A low fog had risen from the ground and swirled in a lazy vortex around the Whisper and the well, stirred by an unnaturally cold, ozone scented wind. Both electroplasmic lanterns were flickering madly, and Shitty stood half crouched over his, with a hand cradled to his chest.

 

As Eric watched, the man shouted again and tried to approach his friend, only for a crackle of energy to leap from the well, strike him in the chest and send him sprawling back with a string of expletives.

 

Eric watched in horrified fascination as a stream of glowing, roughly humanoid figures began to file into the courtyard, emerging one by one through the solid stone of one of the bricked over entrances. They glowed with an eerie blue-white iridescence and arrayed themselves in a loose semicircle around the well. Eric reflexively drew his pistol and aimed it at the growing crowd, despite being almost certain that it would be of little use in this situation. Jack seemed blind to these troubling events and deaf to his friend’s increasingly desperate pleas to break off his attempts to attune with the well.

 

As one, the ghostly figures fell to their knees and prostrated themselves before the well, crying out in voices like the howling wind: “SETARRA!” “THE DEEP!” “SHE RISES!”

 

The well gurgled and began to overflow with jet black seawater, filling the courtyard with the bitter scent of brine. Whatever horrible thing that was going to happen next was interrupted when Shitty Knight, who had removed both of his shoes, chucked one of them at his friend’s head. It landed with a solid THWACK and seemed to jolt Jack out of whatever spell he was under. He collapsed to his hands and knees, breathing heavily, and the glowing figures flickered and then vanished.

 

Eric was only distantly aware of this because he was frozen with formless dread at the overwhelming smell of the sea and the sight of the well overflowing with water. His mind was consumed with the barest flickers of memory; the burn of scraped hands, the icy seawater as it crept up his body, the panic at the bitter taste of it.

 

He watched with unseeing eyes as the two men below collected themselves, conversed briefly and then set to climbing back up the trellis. He was still paralyzed with fear when a dark figure seemingly made of water rose up from the well; its lower body was a column of water, but its upper body seemed roughly human and female, covered all over with scales and festooned with seaweed. The nightmare opened shark black eyes and looked straight at Eric, before turning its gaze to Jack and Shitty, who were hurriedly climbing back up the trellis and unaware of the imminent danger.

 

 _They’re going to die! DO SOMETHING._ Eric finally mastered his terror and brought his pistol to bear on the sinister apparition and fired, shouting “Look out!” in warning. His aim was true, striking the creature in the head, which exploded in a splash of water before reforming, seemingly unharmed. He glanced at Jack and for a moment they locked eyes. Eric saw a spark of recognition in them before Jack dropped back to the ground and turned to face the horror.

 

The Whisper gave a gruff shout and threw out his hand, calling a veritable river of lightning that blasted the creature and much of the courtyard with coruscating energy. It recoiled with a hiss of displeasure and lashed out, quicker than Eric’s eye could follow. One black, clawed limb stretched impossibly across the distance to pin Jack against the wall by his shoulder. Jack grunted as the talons pierced his flesh, and Eric quickly reloaded his pistol, hands only steady because of Katya’s endless drilling.

 

Shitty entered the fray with a shout, pulling a dagger from somewhere and slashing wildly at the protracted limb that held his friend transfixed to the wall. His blows seemed to have little effect, but Eric thought he had the right idea, and carefully lined up a shot at the creature’s elbow. His pistol thundered and the bullet struck true again, severing the arm at the elbow. It splashed as water to the ground and a hand began to reform from the severed stump, but Jack was free, at least for the moment. The crackling of another blast of lighting began to form around Jack’s hands before he screamed in pain and fell to his knees, clutching his head.

 

The monster seemed to draw itself up as if preparing for another strike, before cocking its head to the side as if listening to something far away. After a long, tense moment its body dissolved back into formless water, which splashed harmlessly to the ground.

 

Shitty shouted his friend's name again and rushed over to him, pressing his hand to Jack’s wound. Jack collapsed back against the wall and tipped his head back, staring up at Eric with unreadable blue eyes.

 

Eric held his gaze for a long moment before pulling back from the edge of the roof and moving his veil into place from where it had fallen. In the distance, he could hear the whistles of the Bluecoats, no doubt attracted by the gunfire and blasts of lightning. If these men couldn't avoid the police on their own, there was little Eric could do for them.

 

He tried to shake off the lingering effects of the panic that had gripped him at the sight of the overflowing well and focus himself on the task at hand; the night was just beginning and he had business of his own to attend to. Eric’s stomach churned with uncertainty; he had temporarily allied himself with these men in the face of supernatural terror, but was it the right choice?

 

 _Will it count for anything if they really are after Katya?_ As he set out across the rooftops, he did his best to avoid dwelling on blue eyes and a handsome face.


	2. An Offer is Made

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A character has been seriously injured before the start of this story, and his health condition and prognosis is briefly discussed in this chapter.

Eric stood at one end of the softly lit room which was Larissa Duan’s bedroom and workspace, in front of her neatly organized workbench; he was reheating his dinner, which had gone cold in all the excitement earlier that night. He had been absentmindedly watching Larissa’s reflection in the mirror on the wall in front of him as she flipped through the stolen journal, but he shifted his gaze to himself, assessing.  
   
_I don’t look like I was terrified out of my wits an hour ago. I must be getting used to it._ Eric was five and a half feet tall, had close cropped golden hair and big brown eyes; the hair was from his mother’s Skovlan ancestry and the eyes were from his stolidly Akorosi father. It wasn’t easy being of mixed ancestry in a city that was so hostile to its population of Skov refugees, and it didn’t help that Eric looked younger and more vulnerable than he actually was. He had a hard time getting people to take him seriously. His eyes turned back to Larissa as she spoke.  
  
“I recognize the crest. I got an offer about nine months ago to do a signet ring with this sigil.”  
  
Larissa Duan was a lot of things; artist and forger, fledgling crime boss and daughter of the Dagger Islands' ambassador. She was petite and delicate looking but could put a dagger through your throat at twenty paces. She had the skills and connections to move in high society, but she insisted her friends call her Lardo.  In the parlance of the underworld, she was a Spider; someone who used cunning plans and manipulation, working behind the scenes so that every score came out in her crew’s favor. Her web didn’t extend much past Charterhall University yet, but it was steadily expanding. Eric had more than a little to do with that.

 

Most importantly to Eric, she was a close friend and confidante.

  
“Do you know whose it is?”  
  
“Yeah, I did some research on it. House Zimmermann; they’re old money and older blood, supposedly relatives of the Immortal Emperor himself. They’d almost have to be in order to get away with some of the shit they pull; the current lord, Robert, didn’t openly support Skovlan in the war but did nearly everything just shy of that. Dude married a Skov princess early on in the war as part of a bid for peace. Didn’t work, obviously.” The Skovlanders had fought for their independence from the Akorosi Empire for the better part of forty years. They only surrendered two years ago, after the assassination of their Queen Alayne and her husband.  
  
_Jack had Akorosi features and Skovlander eyes. Could they be related?_ “Does he have a son?”  
  
“Yes. Two of them, I think.”  
  
“Do you know their names?”  
  
“Unfortunately, no."  
  
“Hmm, what do you make of the numbers in the journal?"  
  
Larissa flipped through the pages of the book, face pinched in consternation. “It’s definitely some kind of code, but that’s not really my area of expertise. Sorry, Bits.”  
  
Eric smiled a little at the nickname, despite his disappointment. With his mentor he was almost always Eric Bittle: dutiful student, serious and focused. Lardo’s crew, the Samwell Gang, was big on nicknames, so to them he was “Bitty” or “Bits”; a cheerful chatterbox who doted on his friends by making them food. Only the leadership of the gang, including Larissa, knew him in both capacities. Eric hummed in consideration.  
  
“That’s all right,” Eric replied as he gave his dinner a final flip in the pan before taking it off the small coal-burning stove. “No real point tying our brains in knots trying to figure this out when Katya might be able to just tell me.” Eric plucked his meal out of the hot pan and crossed the room to the low bed where Larissa was seated. He took a bite as he sat next to her, at ease in the close fitting black clothes he wore under his elaborate shadow silk cloak and veil, which he had draped over a nearby chair.  
  
Eric bumped Larissa gently with his shoulder; she was even smaller than him and her black hair had been cropped close on the sides, but was starting to grow out. She was dressed appropriately for the score that she had planned for tonight, in dark leathers that were stylish but practical and protective. Her numerous daggers were sheathed in a wide bandoleer that was hung at the head of the bed.  
  
“Is this her?” Larissa asked, turning to the page that had prompted Eric’s impulsive decision to take the book.  
  
His mentor’s face stared stoically up at him. Whoever had drawn it had managed to show the way the austere beauty of her features combined into a perfect image of disapproval. The artist had managed to also capture her keenly evaluating eyes, which always seemed to probe for a weakness or advantage. Eric wasn’t looking forward to the upcoming confrontation with Katya.  
  
“Yeah, that’s her. Yekaterina Ivankova,” Eric replied, doing his best to imitate his mentor’s cultured Imperial accent. He took another bite of his meal.  
  
“You know, I actually had vague notions about meeting her someday. She’s a legend.” Larissa turned several more pages, revealing more of the cryptic numbers that filled the journal as well as a sketch of a raven. “Not anymore though, too intimidating.”  
  
Eric’s eyes widened with surprise, “Oh! But you’ve already met,” His face took on a look of consideration. “Did I really never tell you this story? I guess it might not count if you didn’t know it was her at the time…”  
  
Larissa turned on the bed so that she was facing him, almond shaped eyes intense. She poked Eric sharply in the arm and demanded, “Explain. From the beginning.”  
  
Eric grinned, since this was a fond memory. “It was a year and a half ago. Katya and I were pulling a score at the Ministry of Preservation. It had something to do with reports on the Imperial stockpile of electroplasm. We got in quietly enough, I cracked the safe and we helped ourselves to the reports as well as some coin.”  
  
“Nice.” Larissa pulled one slender leg up so that she could perch her chin on it.  
  
“We didn’t get to keep it.” Eric replied with a shrug. “Anyway, on our way out we ran into another crew of thieves breaking into the same building, which is always incredibly awkward, let me tell you.”  
  
“Does that happen often?”  
  
“More than you would expect, it’s a crowded city.”  
  
“Were they anyone I know?”  
  
“Have you ever heard of a crew called the Wraiths?”  
  
Larissa shook her head.  
  
“They’re Shadows like Katya and I, and their schtick is that they all wear these creepy animal masks. Apparently their leader has beef with Katya from way back that I don’t know the details of. There were four of them and just two of us, and since I’m mostly useless in a fight, we…”  
  
"Hey." Larissa prodded Eric in the thigh with the foot she had drawn up to her chest to interrupt him, and again so he would look at her. “You totally shot that monster tonight, whatever it was. Give yourself some credit.”  
  
Eric shivered at the memory.  
  
“For all the good it did. It probably could have killed all three of us and it just… left.” Eric shared a pensive look with his friend and continued with the story, trying to put a up a cheerful facade over his unease at the night’s events. “Like I was saying, a fight would have been too risky, so we ditched the coin and high-tailed it out of there across the rooftops. Normally no one can touch us up there, but Katya slid on a loose roof tile and turned her ankle. We needed a place to lie low for a spell, and there happened to be a wild party going on one street over. Is any of this coming back to you?”  
  
“A year and a half ago? Oh gods, this was the Blackout kegster, wasn’t it? No wonder I don’t remember.” One of the Samwell Gang’s various criminal enterprises was the manufacture of exotic alcohols, which they sold at raucous parties which they called “kegsters.” Larissa collapsed backwards onto the bed and covered her eyes with a pillow in a fit of embarrassment. She was usually incredibly reserved around others out of necessity, and Eric reveled in the fact that he got to see her like this.  
  
Eric continued with more than a little glee. “Yep. Ransom thought our cloaks and veils were elaborate costumes for the party and let us jump the line, and then refused to let the Wraiths in on account of their masks. Katya would have probably preferred to hide in a dark corner for a couple of hours, but I wasn’t about to pass up on a chance to socialize with people my own age for once. I got tipsy on one cup of tub juice, met everybody and somehow convinced Katya to challenge you at beer pong.”  
  
Larissa made a distressed noise. “I was so wasted that night. Camilla had just broken up with me.”  
  
Eric gave Larissa a soothing pat on the knee. “That’s why none of the boys chirp you over this. We made a pact.”  
  
“Yeah, well if I die of embarrassment you better hope the Spirit Wardens get my body because otherwise I WILL come back to haunt you.”  
  
“Do you want me to stop?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Eric’s neck prickled, which meant it was a lie and he called her on it, mock stern. “Do not demean our friendship with lies, Larissa.”  
  
Larissa gusted out a sigh that was muffled by the pillow still covering her face. “Fine, continue.”  
  
“Anyways, the game was close but you won despite being drunk off your behind,” Eric was having trouble holding in his laughter. “Then you climbed onto the table, let out a huge burp and fell asleep. Right there! With the band playing and everything.”  
  
Larissa let out an inarticulate grunt of dismay.  
  
”Do you want to know the best part?” Eric asked with a laugh.  
  
“I don't see how it could get any worse than it is already.”  
  
“Katya’s only response to this was to call you…” Eric screwed his face up, trying to master his grin so that he could imitate his mentor’s inflection again. “… a truly formidable opponent. She actually smiled, it was terrifying.”  
  
Larissa sat up, face flushed and eyes dancing. She settled the pillow in her lap. “I remember meeting you the next day. So what, you just spent the night, made us all breakfast in the morning and the rest is history?”  
  
“And the rest is history.” Eric agreed, with a sage nod. He popped the last bite of his meat pie into his mouth. Eric had become fast friends with the leadership of the gang, and it wasn't long before he was using his skills as a Lurk to their advantage. He truly treasured these moments with Larissa where he could just relax for once, and was sure that she felt the same. He knew it wasn’t easy running a gang of burly men in this city, much less as a small female foreigner, and Eric was glad that she had three solid lieutenants to back her up.  
  
_Actually, she only has two right now_. Eric frowned as he was reminded of the reason why they both were dressed for action tonight.  
  
“How’s Johnson doing?” he asked with a gentle voice, all playfulness leaving his expression.  
  
John Johnson, one of Larissa’s lieutenants and the Samwell Gang’s head Whisper, had been attacked and beaten badly about three days ago by unknown assailants. The last Eric had heard, Johnson was unconscious but still alive, thanks to the ministrations of one of Larissa’s other lieutenants: Justin “Ransom” Oluransi, the gang’s Leech. It was his responsibility to keep the crew healthy, as well as manufacture various alchemical substances that were useful to the crew, including the alcohol sold at kegsters.  
  
“He woke up this morning, for a little while.”  
  
“I take it he didn’t say who attacked him, or we would be having a much different conversation right now.”  
  
Larissa shook her head. “All he would say about it is, ‘This will be plot critical motivation in the second act.’ Typical Johnson, honestly.”  
  
While they didn’t know for sure who had attacked Johnson, they had strong suspicions; first among them was a former student organization known as the Cross Boys. Charterhall University was rife with secret societies and fraternal orders, and on occasion these groups would mutate into cults that worshiped the forgotten gods or other dark powers. The Samwell Gang had positioned itself as a sort of protector of the student body, and would fight back against the cults that preyed on students. Things escalated quickly between the two groups when the Cross Boys’ typical weekend plans shifted from “being pompous assholes” to “abducting human sacrifices”. Eric had helped the Samwell Gang on a number of occasions to aid in their quest to get the opposing organization shut down, and they eventually succeeded in getting them kicked off of campus. This wasn’t the complete victory they had hoped; instead of dispersing, the Cross Boys simply moved one district east, to Six Towers, and continued their dark work unabated.  
  
Eric’s role tonight would be to infiltrate their new base of operations and search it for some of Johnson's personal belongings that had been stolen when he was attacked. Larissa and the rest of her crew would be creating a diversion to draw most of the cult away from their hideout.  
  
Eric and Larissa lapsed into an uneasy silence, minds turning over what they would need to do on the upcoming score, and what it would mean for them if they found the evidence they were expecting. The Samwell Gang had never gone to war before, but Eric knew Larissa felt she had no choice.  
  
Their reverie was broken by a loud, rhythmic pounding on the door, which was followed shortly by the door opening and a man sticking his upper body through the space, already speaking in a baritone voice before he could even clearly see the room.  
  
“Hey Lardo, we’re ready whenever Bitty… oh. You’re here.” The rest of Adam “Holster” Birkholtz squeezed it's way into the room, and he closed the door and leaned his back against it, crossing his heavily muscled and tattooed arms across his chest. Adam was every inch a Skovlander and proud of it; he was nearly a foot taller than Eric and had blue eyes and short blond hair. If you knew scoundrels enough to know the signs, it was clear that he was a Cutter; his body was honed to fighting fitness and littered with the scars of past fights. Adam was the gang's best fighter and the lieutenant in charge of training and security.  
  
Adam narrowed his eyes, “How’d you even get in here?”  
  
“Window.” Eric pointed at the window, face innocent.

“This is the third floor. Showoff.”  
  
“How could I be showing off if nobody saw me do it?”  
  
“That makes you even more of a showoff.”  
  
“Holster, that doesn’t make a lick of sense.”  
   
Eric and Adam would be content to playfully bicker with each other for a while, but Larissa clapped her hands twice and stood up from the bed. "Let's get this show on the road, boys." She reached for the bandoleer with her daggers and draped it over her shoulders. Eric also moved to gather his things in preparation to leave.  
  
Eric couldn’t help but overhear Adam’s low rumble, “Did you ask him?”  
  
“Not yet.” Was Larissa’s quiet reply.  
  
Eric carefully settled his shadow silk cloak around his shoulders. “Ask me what?”  
  
Larissa and Adam shared a look, before Larissa continued. “Ransom thinks that Johnson will eventually recover, but his days running scores with us a scoundrel are over.”  
  
“Oh.” Eric wasn’t exactly surprised, but it was a bit of a blow to hear it put so frankly.  
  
“That means that there’s space for someone new in the leadership of the gang.”  
  
Eric turned to look at his two friends with puzzlement. “Do you… want my help picking who to promote? I’m sure you know your boys better than I do.”  
  
Larissa locked eyes with him, face serious. “No Bitty, I want you to be my new lieutenant.”  
  
Eric’s eyes widened in surprise, mouth gaping a little. Larissa pressed on, “Is it really so surprising? You’re one of the best Lurks in the city and we work well together. All of the boys like you, even if they don’t know the whole story.”  
  
_Maybe I like that they don’t know the whole story._ That thought veered a little too close to the naked truth for Eric’s comfort, so he went with his other major concern: his mentor. “What about Katya?”  
  
Larissa made a thoughtful face. “I admit that the timing could be better, considering what happened tonight. But Katya seems to have gone out of her way to make sure that you weren’t caught up in all of her business. Why would she do that if not so that you could make a clean break if you wanted to?”  
  
_Maybe she doesn’t completely trust me. Maybe you shouldn’t trust me either._ Eric’s mind flickered back to the memories that had been dredged up earlier that night; memories he was sure lay at the heart of why he could see in the dark and why he could sense when people lied to him. He had secrets in his past that not even he knew about, and had a sick suspicion that they were going to be coming back to haunt him soon.  
  
“You don’t have to answer now, but think about it. Talk to Katya about what happened tonight and then decide what you want to do. Even if you decide against it, that’s not going to change how things stand between us. I hate to say it Bits, but you’re stuck with us at this point.”  
  
Eric managed a small smile at her reassurance, and pulled his veil into place. “Ok, I’ll think about it. Let’s go do some crime.”


	3. Scurlock Manor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: Some graphic descriptions of violence. No violence is done to any main characters.

The Six Towers district was named for six noble estates that had, when Duskwall was first becoming "The Jewel of Akoros", belonged to the noble families that were ascendant in the politics of the time. These palaces, and the district as a whole had once been the beating heart of high society in the city; in gilded ballrooms the city elite danced and drank, fervently trying to forget that they lived in a world haunted by the dead and blighted by darkness. However, over the centuries, the tides of fortune and fashion shifted—now that heart resided one district north in sparkling new Brightstone. These days few people walked the poorly lit boulevards of Six Towers, and its ballrooms hosted only squatters and ghosts.

 

Six Towers was also where Eric cut his teeth on the kind of rooftop running and climbing that would come to define his career as a Lurk, and where he first fell in love with the city. From his first tentative forays into the world above, Eric knew that the life that Katya had envisioned for him was something that he could embrace with pleasure. He was delighted and fascinated by the secret rhythms of the city—it was ancient and steeped in history, yet it was always changing and reinventing itself. It took a year of intensive training to learn the techniques that would protect him from common dangers—falling, spirits, and other scoundrels—and then Katya set him loose on the city to explore as he pleased. Only a handful of places were forbidden to him for being too dangerous—and he would be breaking into one of them tonight: Scurlock Manor.

 

He wasn’t fool enough to try and hide his plans from his mentor out of fear of her reproach. When he told her his intentions and asked for her advice on how to proceed, she gave him her patented speculative look and divulged the information without any admonition. In her way, that was as good as warm encouragement. She revealed that many Spirit Wardens had been massacred at the manor, and it was still thick with the echoes of that violence. Echoes were one of the more common types of spectral phenomena, similar in composition to ghosts but without the animating intelligence behind them. They could manifest wherever someone experienced any extreme emotion, though they usually formed at the sites of terrible violence. An echo of killing rage and one of ecstatic joy were equally dangerous—touching one would result in a powerful electric shock. Katya warned him that the top two floors were the thickest with echoes and should be avoided if at all possible and Eric adjusted his plans accordingly.

 

* * *

 

 

Scurlock Manor was a study in faded glory; it was four stories and marble-clad, with all the architectural flourishes that would be appropriate for the seat of a noble house. Fluted columns framed the entry, the front was overgrown with dead vines and the grounds were studded with the naked plinths of a long-ago vandalized sculpture garden. The manor was set on a triangular plot at the easternmost edge of the city—right up against the river Dosk.

 

If he cared to try, Eric could actually see the Deathlands that lay on the other side of the river from where he was situated on top of the manor’s boathouse. Only the massive lightning barriers that surrounded Duskwall stood between the city and the hordes of ghosts that roamed the Deathlands—millions died in the Cataclysm and three days later their maddened spirits had risen to plague the living. It was one of the cruel truths of the world—the dead rose and the sun did not. Once, the magic of the Immortal Emperor had sheltered the last bastions of humanity from the spirit hordes, but as that magic's power waned the Empire came to rely on the huge electroplasm-powered towers to keep the ghosts at bay.

 

Instead of dwelling on things he couldn’t change, Eric was lying flat on his back and listening to a group of three Cross Boys inside the building complain about their circumstances. He was just biding his time until the Samwell Gang made their move, but he had already learned some useful information: The Cross Boys were sharing the manor with another cult that served the same dark power, a demon, and they weren’t happy about it.

 

“I can’t believe Chad caved to some motherfucking kid. No wonder he led us into this hellhole.” The first voice was the most agitated out of the three, and his invective was sharply at odds with his obviously practiced accent. The Cross Boys, as a group, were a bastion of the upper middle class, and were painted with their parent’s aspirations towards at least the seeming of nobility in a myriad of ways. Affecting various accents was one of the many skills Katya had tried to teach Eric over the years, but he was hopeless at it.

 

“I don’t think he had much of a choice.” The second voice was quiet and calm, with a lilting Iruvian accent.

 

“Listen, I get that the kid is creepy, but we outnumber them. Plus, all he’s got are his servants. What’s his fucking butler going to do against us?” The first voice asked, getting more heated.

 

“And what are we going to do against a demon? You know, the one powerful enough to drive us all insane with nightmares if we didn’t come play house with her favorite pet?” The third voice was scathing and sarcastic.

 

“She can’t be with him all the time. Do you really think a demon is sentimental enough to care about some human once it’s over? If we…”

 

“No.” the Iruvan said, decisive, but still quiet. “Maybe we could have done that when we first got here, but we’ve lost too many. We don’t know who we can trust.”

 

“What are you talking about? Who have we lost?” The third voice now sounded confused.

 

“I thought I was just being paranoid, but the way Chad went from wanting to demand concessions from our new friends to talking about how we should listen to that brat and his cronies confirms it. We are slowly being subverted, one by one.”

 

“What? How?”

 

“Ghostly possession, perhaps. Hypnotic suggestion, or something more exotic. Chad was alone with them for an hour—anything could have happened. As for the rest? Haven’t you noticed that many have been acting strange? Subdued. Biddable. We’ve been in close quarters for a month and Marcus hasn’t gotten into a fight with anyone.”

 

“Fuck.”

 

“Yes, quite.”

 

“What do we do?”

 

“The young Mr. Scurlock keeps the rarer volumes in his collection in a locked study on the second floor, on the opposite side from the library. I suspect if there is some way to break our connection to the demon so she cannot torment us with dreams, it will be found in there. If we...”

 

The Iruvian, who had been gradually losing his composure as he spoke fell to a harsh whisper when the back door of the manor opened with an audible slam followed by hurried footsteps on the gravel path leading to the boathouse.

 

“Act normal. Say nothing of this.”

 

The footsteps transitioned from crunching to clomping as the new arrival mounted the stairs down to the boathouse, and Eric heard the creak of the door.

 

“There you are! Come on, those Samwell fuckers just showed up at the apothecary and the tavern. Chad wants us to go make sure they don’t start any trouble.”

 

This was the signal Eric had been waiting for. The plan that Larissa had come up with was elegant in its simplicity—the Cross Boys had been working as security for a number of businesses in Six Towers, so showing up at them in force should draw most of the cult members away from their base. It seemed likely that these businesses were actually owned by the other cult sharing Scurlock Manor, but things were going to plan despite that unforeseen wrinkle.

 

Eric wasn’t sure what to make of these new developments; if he found evidence of the Cross Boys’ involvement in Johnson’s beating could they find some way to exact their vengeance without involving this other cult and their demon? The cult leader claimed the same name as the manor, did that signify a real noble connection or was it an affectation? Eric knew next to nothing about demons beyond the fact that they were incredibly dangerous, and he didn’t think any of the Samwell Whispers knew much more.

_Katya might know something, or maybe I should take the Iruvian’s advice and steal some books._ Eric carefully rolled onto his stomach and watched the four men hastily crunch their way back up to the house with a few dark mutters.

 

Eric had scouted the manor the previous evening and had identified a number of possible points of entry. All of the windows on the first floor were barred with elegant ironwork, but there were three doors—the main entrance on the west side, the servants entrance on the south side, and a pair of double doors on the east side that let out onto the patio and boathouse. The windows on all the upper floors had been smashed at some point, but only the second floor's had been boarded over to keep out the weather. The third and fourth-floor windows were left dark and bare, except for when the blue glow of spiritual activity shone from within.

 

Eric waited for another five minutes after the men had disappeared into the building before shuffling to the edge of the boathouse roof and dropping lightly to the ground below. He strayed from the gravel path and into the sand that covered the ground of the former sculpture garden. Since grass would not grow to cover the earth, it had once been in fashion to import large amounts of black sand from the deserts of Iruvia, which would be raked into complicated spiraling patterns to please the eye. Eric wasn’t surprised none of the current residents of the manor had taken up the practice.

 

Eric stalked quietly up to the back door of the manor; the moon was a pale sliver in the sky, and none of the lamps in the back of the house were lit, so he was confident that the darkness would hide him, especially with the help of his shadow cloak, which was also an Iruvian import. Katya claimed that the silk helped hide him in shadows because it came from giant half-demon spiders, and she had worded her statement carefully enough that he wasn't sure if it was the truth or not. His unnatural sight was able to penetrate any shadow, but he was still conscious of darkness as a sort of dimness of varying intensity. It had taken some time to learn how to judge if a shadow was deep enough to hide in, and still took more than a little bit of nerve to remain in positions that, to him, seemed utterly exposed.

 

The doors had almost certainly once been beautiful, fitted with graceful panes of glass that would allow a pleasing view of the backyard from the inside but, like the windows on the upper floors, the glass was long gone and rough planks had been fitted over the empty space. Eric pressed his ear to the door for a long minute but heard nothing save for the distant motion of the river behind him and the crackle of the lightning towers. There was no visible lock on the door, which was actually a bad thing—this probably meant that the locks on the door were deadbolts, which he would be unable to manipulate from this side. Nonetheless, he had a small bit of hope that the cultists were in such a hurry to go face his friends that they would neglect to secure the door. He carefully turned the knob and pushed, but the door was unyielding.

 

The way the door didn’t even move made Eric think the deadbolts were at the top and bottom of the door; there was no way he was getting in this way without taking too much time or making too much noise. Eric set off to his left, around to the south side of the building, pausing at each window to see what he could make out. Both east side windows and the first window after he rounded the corner revealed the manor’s kitchen, in surprisingly good repair considering the extent of the damage to the outside of the building. It was unoccupied, but dim light spilled into it from the adjoining room further towards the front of the house.

 

The next window revealed what appeared to be the servant’s dining room. It was primarily occupied by a long table with chairs, and an open entryway led to the hallway that connected to the servant’s entrance. Three men in faded servant’s livery were seated at the table playing cards and speaking in low voices; two were facing the hallway that Eric would have to sneak down to gain access to the rest of the manor. Luckily the only light in the room was a single electric lantern on the center of the table—he could do something about that, assuming he could get the door open.

 

Eric padded up the three steps to the servant’s entrance and crouched in front of the door and gently tried to open it. It was locked, but this time there was a keyhole to work with. That was all he needed. He pulled his lock picks out of the pouch at his side and set to work.  Eric had always had a deft touch; before Katya, his skill with his hands had been dedicated to the task of creating food that was both delicious and beautiful. Those days weren’t completely behind him though—he cooked for Katya and his friends in the Samwell gang, and when the stress and danger of his life got to be too much, he would spend more than he probably should on fresh fruit (an extravagant luxury in a sunless world) and head down to Barrowcleft to bake with his mother. Their conversation would be superficial, never straying too close to what Eric _actually_ did with his time, but they would move seamlessly around the little kitchen like Eric was still thirteen, and something would settle inside of him.

 

He didn’t long for some alternate life where things had turned out differently, though. He liked his work with Katya and the Samwell Gang; he liked the excitement and the mystery and he even liked the danger, a little bit. He had never felt as free as he did when he ran across the rooftops beneath the moon and stars. He had witnessed Duskwall in all its glory and all its deprivation, and he was starting to realize that he didn’t have to accept everything about the city that was cruel and unjust; some things he could change. Some things he _had_ changed. That was what he was really working towards tonight—yes, he wanted to see justice done for his friend, but he also wanted to help make sure that these cults wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone else.

 

Eric grinned in satisfaction when the lock opened with a soft click, and he opened the door enough that he could reach the hinges with his small oil canister. It wouldn’t do to go through all this trouble just to be found out because of a squeaky hinge. That done, he eased the door the rest of the way open and slid inside. Something he was unable to see from the perspective of the window was that across from the entryway to the dining room was another hallway leading off to the left, as well as a door straight ahead. It was a few short strides to the intersection and he crouched at the edge of it and looked left first. In that direction, he saw a hallway with four doors—two on either side. At the end of the hallway was a staircase that led up to the second floor. Eric thought that these were likely the servant’s quarters. He didn’t think it probable that Johnson’s belongings would be in those rooms, so he turned his attention to the dining room. It seemed the men were between hands, as the one with his back to Eric was currently shuffling the deck. Eric idly wondered if these were simply hired hands or full-blown cultists themselves, but he didn’t have time to hang around and try to find out. Eric took a deep breath in and out and prepared to attune himself to the electroplasm powering the lantern on the table. Attuning to the ghost field was not something to be done lightly, and held peril even for someone as experienced as Eric.

 

The thing about the ghost field is that it is _always_ there, just beneath the surface. The mystics say that you feel the field with your soul, and the spectrologists only disagree in that they feel the term “soul” has unnecessarily romantic connotations. Either way, that constant presence is filtered through the body’s physical perceptions in a way that is different for everyone. To Eric, the ghost field was like a deep sonorous hum, something almost felt, rather than heard. It was something that Eric had learned early on to ignore, but he turned his attention to it now—let it fill him up until he buzzed with it, until his everything sang like a crystal glass at the touch of a damp finger around its edge. The connection was good—this time he had managed it without giving himself a headache, or something worse. He breathed out a cold gust of white vapor and he _saw_.

 

Phantoms of the past leapt into his vision in flickering electric blue; here a maid wept as she was chastised by a stoic butler, there two footmen brawled while the other servants looked on in fear—a dozen scenes of everyday joy and rage and sadness swarmed the room for a moment before Eric pushed them away to focus on his goal: the electroplasm in the lamp, which shone brightly through the steel of the reservoir that contained it. He had to be careful not to overplay his hand; it was common knowledge that you could interfere with electrical things this way. He willed the thrumming in and around him to waver in pitch and the light flickered. Again. The men at the table turned their attention to the lamp. Again, the lamp flickered at his urging. One of the men reached over to the lantern to tap at it in frustration, and Eric forced the light to go out.

 

He was dimly aware of the men’s quiet exclamations of dismay, but he was too focused on sneaking past the entryway and keeping a tight control on his connection to the ghost field to make sense of them. Once he was past, he severed the connection—closing himself off from the field until it was just a familiar low hum. Unsure if the men would decide to investigate—or simply give up their game for the night—Eric moved quickly but silently through the door straight ahead of him after checking that the adjoining hallway was dark and empty. As he closed the door carefully behind himself, he crouched down and took stock of his surroundings.

 

He was in a ten-foot-wide hallway that seemed to run the breadth of the house—off to his right, he could see where the hallway widened out to a room with couches and small tables, as well as the double doors which had stymied him earlier. To his left, the hallway led to the entryway at the front of the house which was open to the second story. The hallway itself was clean, but cracked tiles and peeling wallpaper spoke of the manor’s long abandonment. Eric could make out discolored patches of the wall where paintings or mirrors had probably once had been hung, but all such decorations were long gone. Instead of fine cabinets and rare curious, the hallway was lined in both directions with cots and piles of luggage of all sorts.

 

 _Probably not the quality of accommodations the Cross Boys are accustomed to._ A small vindictive part of Eric was pleased that the cult had been reduced to basically sleeping on the floor of a ruin, but the rest of him was worried about how much time it would take to search through all of their belongings. Some jobs required a high degree of finesse and Eric took great pride in his ability to steal something and leave no trace of his presence—this was not one of those jobs.

 

The object of his search would be Johnson’s ritual implements: his spirit mask, which was a Whisper tool used to protect against possession and focus the wearer’s perceptions of the ghost field—Eric had his own mask in his bag with the rest of his tools—as well as a specially consecrated knife that Johnson used to focus his arcane powers for combat. Just knowing that these items were in the Cross Boys’ possession would be enough to prove their involvement, but actually recovering the items was important as well; a Whisper was bound to their tools in a very literal sense—in the hands of an enemy practitioner, the items would be an avenue for further attack.

 

Eric set to work—unbuckling bags, unlatching trunks and emptying rucksacks. Any locks were of the simple sort and were opened easily with his trained hands. It took him thirty minutes to do a thorough inventory, pausing occasionally to listen for movement in the house, and while he found many hidden stashes of drugs and money, there was no sign of the knife or the mask. He sat on the final trunk and closed his eyes, taking a moment to focus himself. Time was running out, and he didn’t think he could through all the luggage again before the cultists came back. Eric’s gut told him that the mask and knife had been taken impulsively, and not as merely the prelude for some further plot.

 

 _They were taken as trophies of victory over a hated foe, and you_ display _trophies_. Eric popped up from the trunk and walked the short distance to the sitting room in the back of the house and had to refrain from smacking himself in the forehead for not thinking of this sooner. There, hanging on the wall, was Johnson’s spirit mask. It was white and red and would cover the whole face when worn, with holes for eyes and a slit for a mouth. It was actually designed to mimic a goalie mask, in a nod to the Samwell Gang’s origin as a hockey club, and their continued enthusiasm for the sport. Hockey was one of the few Skovlander cultural touchstones that had remained popular in Duskwall despite the bloody civil war. When winter came and froze the ponds in the city, people of all ages and backgrounds would strap on their skates to play. Eric was no exception.

 

Eric walked over to the mask and reached to take it down. As soon as he touched the mask, he felt an ice cold chill run down his spine and a sudden pressure of the ghost field against his mind. Both sensations quickly abated, and when nothing further happened he grabbed the mask off the wall and turned it over to inspect it. This revealed a rune traced on the inside of the mask in blue chalk. The ghost field could be manipulated in a variety of ways, none of which persisted very long unless they were anchored to something in the physical world. A chalk rune was the simplest and weakest kind of anchor, and the one used on the mask was the kind used for wards that alert the scribe when the rune was disturbed. Eric had underestimated the Cross Boys in his haste, and it was lucky that there hadn’t been a more serious trap, one that blasted him with lightning or unleashed a particularly creative curse. Whoever had placed the rune would know he was there now—time was even shorter than it was before.

 

He quickly surveyed the room as he shoved the mask into his backpack. The furniture in the room was clearly not what had been present when nobility had been in residence; there were two beat-up old couches and three small square tables—one of which had a knife sticking out of the center. He quickly moved over to the table and verified that yes, it was Johnson's and continued around it, examining it from every angle for further traps. He would need to attune in order to disable them if they were present, but making a simple physical inspection was a calculated risk he was willing to take. He found no runes, so he braced himself with one hand on the table and with some effort pulled the knife from the wood. Nothing obvious happened, so he sheathed the knife and put it with the mask.

 

That done, he padded over to the double doors that led out to the patio and undid the deadbolts at the top and bottom of the door. He paused with his hand on the latch, torn by indecision. He could leave now and get away clean, or he could take a risk and check out the upstairs room. Once again he longed for his mentor’s presence, if not her wisdom; if he still had a partner they could have split up the tasks and accomplished everything easily. Now it was just down to him.

 

 _If I accept Lardo’s offer, maybe I can train one of the boys to be my partner. If I make it through this, and we don’t all get eaten by a demon._  Eric squared his shoulders and grabbed a chair before darting back down the hallway to the front entrance. He firmly wedged the chair underneath the doorknob, hoping that it would at least give him some warning when the rest of the cultists returned, and headed up the stairs. He paused at the landing and looked left and right; to his left he could make out a dimly lit room with large bookshelves. Light meant people and bookshelves meant it was the library, so he headed to his right. There was a short hallway that ended with a window seat that had looked out of the south side of the manor before it had been boarded over. There was one door on either side and from what he had seen of the first floor, the one on the right would be the second floor of servant’s quarters. He knelt before the door on the left and forced himself to calmly examine it for anything dangerous.

 

Surprisingly, he found nothing except the admittedly finely crafted lock on the door. He had gotten the impression that whoever was really in charge of Scurlock Manor was a formidable Whisper, yet he seemed to have left something important without any arcane protection. It made Eric question the information he had overheard earlier. The Iruvian had not lied and had spoken with conviction, and his fear at being overheard had seemed genuine. Eric bit his lip and resolved that if this room didn’t turn out to be the one he wanted, he would give up on the books for now and retreat.

 

He bent to the task of trying to open the lock, and while it was a much more advanced lock than the one on the servant’s entrance, it shouldn’t have been much of a challenge at this point in his career. When it came to picking locks and cracking safes, he was good enough that even Katya bowed to his experience. He needed to focus, but he was starting to feel the impact of everything that had happened tonight and would happen later: Who were those men on the rooftops? What was the creature that had attacked them? Could he convince Katya to tell him her jealously guarded secrets? Would the Samwell Gang prove victorious in the gang war with the Cross Boys? Which of his friends would die? A bead of sweat slid from his hairline down towards his eye and he cursed and wiped it away. He gripped his delicate tools hard for a moment, and sat back on his heels and pulled his veil down from his face, trying to center himself. He took slow, steady breaths and remembered what Katya always told him when things got dire: focus on the job in front of you, the rest could be worked out later.

 

 _Focus._ He had calmed himself, for now, and returned to the lock, applying torsion to it with his small wrench and gently feeling for the tumblers with his pick. He let out a huff of satisfaction when at last the lock clicked open, and with a glance down the hallway towards the library, slipped into the room. It was a study and featured a wing-back chair placed beside the hearth, a desk piled high with papers and a bookshelf. It was also immediately obvious why the security on the door had been so lax—the bookshelf was fitted with a metal cage with a lock and a prominently displayed rune etched into the metal. This kind of rune was the type that usually held particularly lethal curses that were usually cast by multiple Whispers working together. That meant it would usually take an exceptionally powerful Whisper or several people working together to disarm. Eric was confident that he could break it with some of the unusual techniques he had developed on his own, but he knew that he didn't have enough time. Just then, he heard a loud bang echo up from the first floor, followed by repeated pounding and shouts.

_Time to go!_ He spared a passing glance to the papers on the desk and was shocked when he recognized something. There was a drawing of a beautiful woman, done by the same hand that had drawn the sketches in the journal he had stolen earlier that night. The page looked like it had been torn out of a book of some kind, and a quick search of the drawers of the desk revealed a second journal emblazoned with the Zimmermann crest. He grabbed it, and as many of the papers as he could and shoved them into his bag. Eric hurried back to the door, thinking quickly; getting out on the first floor was out of the question, he would have to go out of a window of one of the upper floors. It would be a damn tricky proposition if he didn’t have an ace up his sleeve. He took a series of slow breaths, as deep as he could, in and out. He opened the door to the study, took the deepest breath that he could and _vanished_.

 

Katya had made her legend doing the seemingly impossible; the stories said she could turn invisible, slip through a keyhole and even fly like a bird. She could, in fact, do all of those things and she had taught Eric how to do them as well. She called the technique the Ghost Veil, and it worked by partially shifting the user's body into the ghost field, rendering them invisible and intangible, able to flow through small gaps and float through the air. It was not without its drawbacks, however; the physical sensation of immersing your entire body in the freezing, crackling energy of the ghost field was highly unpleasant. Additionally, while the user was intangible they could not breathe, meaning that Eric could only remain veiled for as long as he could hold his breath. Lastly, it placed a significant strain on the user’s body, limiting how frequently it could be used in a short amount of time. Eric had a hard limit of twice in one night, after which he would need extra rest and food to recuperate.

 

Eric floated smoothly out into the hallway, grimacing at the unpleasant tingling all over his body. The Veil was not a good way to get where you wanted to go quickly—the best you could do was float along at a moderate walking pace. For this reason, he had plenty of time to observe the two figures standing on the second-floor landing as he floated towards the stairs.

 

The one closest to him was a skinny young man with short dark hair and pale skin. He looked to be about fourteen, was of a height with Eric and was dressed quite well considering the state of his lodgings. Eric assumed that this was the 'young Mr. Scurlock' that the Iruvian had spoken of earlier. The second figure was troubling in its familiarity—it looked almost exactly like the creature that had injured Jack earlier that night. It had the same black, scaled skin, empty shark eyes, and clawed hands, though its lower body ended in two solid looking legs instead of a formless column of black seawater. Eric was certain that it was the same creature and that it was the demon that the cultists were talking about earlier.

 

Eric wasn’t sure if the veil would work against a demon, but he suspected he was about to find out. The pair were conversing casually and ignoring the shouting and pounding at the front door. Their voices echoed oddly but clearly across the membrane between worlds, and Eric couldn’t help but overhear as he floated up the stairs.

 

“They’re so noisy. Are you sure we can’t just kill them?” The boy spoke in a high clear voice, playful and pitched seemingly to play up his youth, which was a disturbing contrast to his murderous statement.

 

“Your uncle seems to think they will be useful. Aren’t you having fun playing with them?” The demon’s voice was unpleasantly wet, and her tone was serious.

 

The boy seemed to ignore this question, and instead crossed his arms over the banister and leaned over it, looking down into the entryway where Eric had left the contents of the Cross Boys’ luggage spilled everywhere. His face looked delighted at these turn of events, and in a singsong voice he said, “My goodness, Setarra! They’ve been robbed!”

 

By now Eric was fully in their line of sight, yet if they could detect him they gave no outward sign. He would have let out a sigh of relief, except he was busy holding his breath.

 

The demon, Setarra, turned and looked down the hallway to where Eric had left the door to the study open, and placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder before speaking, “Someone has been in your study.”

 

The boy’s face went from delight to cold fury in an instant, and both of them turned and stalked quickly towards the room and out of sight. Moments later a childish scream of outrage and fury emanated from the room, but by then Eric was at the third floor landing and looking around for an open window to escape through.

 

Something was bothering him about what he had seen just now, beyond the boy’s casual attitude towards murder and mercurial, unhinged temperament. It suddenly struck Eric what it was—neither the boy nor the demon had carried a lantern, but both could see down to the unlit first floor. Whatever had happened to Eric, whatever he was, it was possible that the boy was the same. That thought chilled him, but he didn’t let himself dwell on it. He needed to focus on getting out of the manor. He had a lot of practice holding his breath, but he was starting to feel it burn in his chest.

 

Once on the third floor, he was immediately confronted by the spiritual echoes he had been warned about. Four spectral figures clashed with swords immediately off to his left. Three of them were dressed in Spirit Warden uniforms, including their anonymity preserving spirit masks. The masks looked like a stern human face, neither male nor female, stylized with sharp lines and planes instead of soft natural curves. The sight of those masks inspired hope and fear in the populace of Duskwall; the Spirit Wardens were the first line of defense when it came to the supernatural in the city, and were responsible for finding and cremating every dead body before it’s spirit could rise from the grave. That was all to the good, but the wardens also policed the unlicensed use of magic and certain arcane technologies with a heavy hand—almost everyone in the city knew someone, or knew of someone, who had been taken in for “questioning” by the Spirit Wardens and simply disappeared.

 

One thing was certain, the Spirit Wardens were all formidable, which made it odd that these three had been soundly defeated by a single man. That man was tall and thin, almost emaciated, and was dressed like a noble who had just returned from spending the night on the town. The only thing out of place was the spirit mask he wore, which was stylized to look like a snarling wolf. The way he moved was inhumanly quick, and it seemed like his blows struck with a force far exceeding what his frail looking body should be able to muster.

 

Eric floated above them and watched the echo repeat a few times, trying to get the timing right so that he could slip through the window. These phantasms were present both within the ghost field and in the world of flesh, so he was still at risk despite being immaterial to most things.

 

The echo repeated again. The Wolf approached the three Wardens who rushed him, only two abreast because of the narrow corridor. The left Warden tried for an overhand attack, while the right one went for a thrust to the gut. The Wolf easily snapped up his sword to parry high with only one hand, and turned neatly so that the thrust just barely missed him. In the same motion, he grabbed the sword hand of the thrusting Warden and kicked out at the other one, sending him bodily flying backwards into the third warden. As both of them tumbled backward into the floor, the Wolf brought his sword down on the extended arm of the thrusting warden, severing it neatly halfway between his shoulder and elbow. The Warden collapsed to his knees, clutching at the remains of his arm, and the Wolf neatly beheaded him with an upstroke and a gleeful, silent laugh. The remaining Wardens had managed to struggle to their feet and were preparing for another charge when the Wolf gestured with his free hand and blasted them with a torrent of lightning. The wardens twitched violently as they collapsed to the floor and they did not rise. The Wolf grinned with obvious pleasure. Then all four figures disappeared, and after a moment, the scene began again.

 

Eric hovered near the ceiling above where the two men would be killed with lightning. He thought that he had the timing down, and could slip out the window in front of him in the short delay between the echo resetting and the two men being flung backward down the hall. He glanced down the hallway which led to the back of the house. There he saw more scenes of the man in the wolf mask slaughtering Spirit Wardens, seemingly with ease.

 

 _Did one man really do all of this?_ Eric wouldn’t have believed it possible if he hadn’t seen the evidence with his own eyes. Below him, the two Spirit Wardens died again, and he floated as quickly as he could through the window out into the night air. Down below he saw little groups of Cross Boys searching the grounds of the manor by lamplight. His lungs were burning, but he had enough air to make it over the manor wall and onto a nearby roof. From there he could easily make his way back to the Samwell Gang’s territory to let them know what he had found.


	4. Introductions

The fear that Katya might be attacked in their home had been very real in the time just after her injury, but as the months wore on and Katya recovered physically and regained her aura of ironclad determination, that fear had faded into a background worry for Eric. He hadn’t realized just how much that fear had dwindled until he was almost back to the Samwell Haus and he started to wonder if he should have been more worried about those men he had stolen the journal from. There were a dozen reasons why he had dismissed the possibility of them somehow locating the apartment, penetrating its defenses and harming his mentor, but he was left with one quiet persistent question: what if?

 

For this reason, he had cut his debriefing with Larissa and her lieutenants short with a promise to meet in a few days to go over in detail what he discovered at Scurlock Manor, as well as what he found out about the Zimmermann journals from Katya. Eric was confident that Larissa could keep the more reckless members of her gang from going off halfcocked and ending up as demon food, but it was anyone’s guess as to what the young Mr. Scurlock and his demon might do in response to the theft of the journal. Eric said his goodbyes and promised again to think over Larissa’s offer to bring him into the Samwell Gang officially and had set off south to the Nightmarket district, and home.

 

Nightmarket was appropriately named, as it was the locus of trade in Duskwall—electro-rail trains carried visitors and goods from the far corners of the empire to Gaddoc Rail Station, where they were unloaded to be sold in the bustling shops and stalls that lined the multi-tiered streets of the district. Multiple stories of wooden boardwalks were piled in a haphazard heap, and the commerce extended underground to stores and clubs built along broad subterranean avenues. All of it was lit garishly to attract the eye, with lights of every color, signs and advertisements cluttering every inch of available space—demanding the attention of potential customers. Punctuating this riot of fiduciary excess were the high walls of estates built by those who had the wealth to live extravagantly but lacked the title or connections to make their home in refined Brightstone.

 

Eric and Katya lived more than comfortably in the converted top floor of a warehouse not far from the rail station. They also did so with a degree of anonymity that Katya prized—they didn’t exactly have neighbors, and the workers in the building were paid well enough to not ask questions.

 

As Eric hurried through the district, which was still active and vibrant despite the late hour, the scenery gradually shifted—brightly painted signs and stalls gave way to the drab cinderblocks of the warehouses closest to the rail station. Eventually he could make out his building in distance. It was three stories, taller than the warehouses around it, and unlike the rest of the buildings it sported a tall fence with razor wire that ran around the rooftop. A green light glimmered from the top of the fence.

 

Eric let out a sigh of relief that turned into a yawn. The light was a signal that he and Katya had agreed upon now that Eric had been working jobs on his own. They had needed a way for Eric to know if the apartment was safe to return to and had worked out a system of different lights; green meant that all was well, and that Katya was still awake. With his worries put to rest, he slowed his pace and made his way across the rooftops using a series of crude plank bridges, navigating the maze like construction with practiced ease. His mind was focused inward on the conversation he was about to have with his mentor. He had learned a lot tonight, and it was gradually coming into focus. It seemed like everything was connected—Katya, the Zimmermanns, the demon and the cults in Scurlock Manor. Hopefully Katya would be willing to give him clarity.

 

Eric walked up to the edge of the building directly north of his apartment and carefully checked the alley below and the horizon to make sure he was unobserved. Satisfied, he crouched and pressed his hand to the roof. He felt the low buzz when the ward reacted to his presence, and watched as an iron staircase materialized in the space between the two buildings with a crackle.

 

Eric was proficient in his use of the Ghost Veil, but he didn’t really understand the theory behind it the way Katya did. Her mastery of the technique allowed her to extend the effect to inanimate objects, allowing her to shift them back and forth between the physical world and the ghost field. She had used these skills extensively when creating their lair, making it very difficult for any intruders to access their home. Fog immediately began wafting off of the metal, which was extremely cold from spending so long in the ghost field. As Eric mounted the steps he made sure not to touch the railing with his bare hands, and he reached into his pocket for the keys that would let him through the fence.

 

He re-locked the gate once he was through, and bent to touch the ward that would send the staircase back to the other side. The high fence hid the fact that Katya had turned the roof into a training area; part obstacle course, part dojo, part shooting range. Eric had toiled up here for countless hours under Katya’s stringent instruction; making it through that first year of training, when the pain of separation from his family was still fresh, was the hardest thing he had ever done. He had struggled with feelings of inadequacy, certain that his humble origin in the farming district of Barrowcleft made him unfit for the kinds of things Katya was training him for. Whenever he voiced these doubts, Katya reminded him that the single most important skill was something he had learned helping his family: how to work hard. With that, she said, everything else would follow.

 

Katya had been right on both counts, more or less; she despaired at getting him to sit down and read through books on dry topics like the theory of spectrology and the history of the nobility, but he threw himself into practicing the hands-on parts of their work with a vigor that satisfied even Katya’s exacting expectations. As Eric wound his way through the obstacle course, seven years removed from those first tentative steps into Katya’s world, he found those old doubts resurfacing; whatever he was about to get himself involved in, it was more dangerous than anything he had faced before. It had nearly claimed his mentor’s life. Surely it was arrogance to think that he would fare any better.

 

 _Maybe if we had been working together from the beginning, things would have turned out differently._ Eric allowed himself to be bitter, just for a little while, at the thought that Katya’s secretiveness might have doomed him as well as his friends in the Samwell Gang. He opened the rooftop door and descended the spiral staircase that led down to his apartment. By the time he reached the bottom he had swallowed his resentment and his doubts and was focused on future and the things he could actually affect. There was no way to go back and train harder or convince Katya to take him into her confidence; he would just have to hope that he and his friends would be enough.

 

The stairs let out into a small room with racks and pegs for gear. Straight across from the stairs was an entryway that led to the kitchen, which lightly obscured with a beaded curtain. Eric didn’t bother flicking on the overhead light, and moved to start stowing his belongings. He pointedly didn't think about Katya's gear, which had been shelved for the past six months and would likely remain that way forever. His shadow cloak got hung from its designated peg, and he stowed his lock picks and climbing gear in their various cubby holes. He removed the harness that held his dagger and pistol and hung it from a peg as well. He took his pistol from its holster and was about to snap it open to unload it when he sensed movement in the kitchen. He began to turn his head to greet Katya, but he stopped, frozen with surprise at what he saw in the adjoining room.

 

_Jack is in my kitchen._

 

Eric’s body was flooded with adrenaline as all of his previously dismissed fears came rushing back. He reflexively brought his still loaded pistol to bear on the man, who did not seem to have noticed him yet. He was facing perpendicular to Eric and was going through the cabinets above the stovetop one handed, as his injured left arm was in a sling. He was shirtless, and Eric could see where fresh bandages had been applied to his shoulder. His hair was in disarray like he had been running his hand through it, and his face was decidedly disgruntled as he pulled boxes of tea out of the cabinets and examined them.

 

His appearance and actions didn’t really play into Eric’s fears that he was some master assassin who had killed his mentor and was now lying in wait to take out Eric himself. Eric actually recognized Jack’s expression from wearing it himself many times over the last seven years; he looked like he had just been imperiously commanded by Katya to go do something and was complying without being too happy about it.

 

Eric let himself feel a bit of hope; the light on the roof _had_ been green, and there had always been the chance that Katya’s presence in the journal signified some kind of alliance with the Zimmermanns. He had even wondered if Jack might be a Zimmermann himself; he certainly looked like the culmination of a union between the nobility of both nations. Still, that was no reason to take any chances. He stalked forward with his pistol held out ahead of him, parting the hanging wooden beads with a chorus of faint clicking.

 

Jack dropped the box he was holding in surprise at the noise and turned to look in Eric’s direction. His eyes widened in recognition as he took in Eric’s face and then narrowed in obvious anger. He started to take a step towards Eric when he noticed the gun and he paused, mouth turning down in displeasure. He raised his good hand in a gesture of surrender but spoke accusingly.

 

“You stole the journal.”

 

“Yes, I did.” Eric gave him his least sincere smile.

 

“Give it back.”

 

“I will if you answer my questions in a satisfactory manner.” Being able to see through lies certainly payed it’s dividends when it came to gunpoint confessions.

 

“Why did you even take it? What possible value could it have to you?”

 

“It had a sketch of my mentor in it.”

 

“ _You’re_ her student?” Jack’s voice was thick with incredulity.

 

“Yes, and I would like to remind you that I am currently holding you at gunpoint.” Eric pulled back the hammer on his pistol to emphasize the point.

 

Jack subsided, but he didn’t look happy about it. He clenched his right fist and thinned his lips.

 

Eric continued, doing his level best to be as intimidating as possible.

 

“Now, tell me who you are and what you're doing here. Have you hurt Katya? I’ll know if you lie, so don’t even think about it.”

 

Eric tensed and stared into Jack’s eyes while waiting for the answer. He had managed to avoid killing anyone so far in his career, and while he didn’t relish the thought of becoming a killer he was prepared to do it. Probably.

 

Jack broke his gaze, staring fixedly over Eric’s shoulder. He spoke in a clipped tone, diction precise.

 

“My name is Jack Zimmermann. Your mentor is sitting in the other room, completely unharmed. I’m here seeking her help, actually, and have no intention of harming either of you.”

 

Eric let out a tense breath and pointed the gun at the floor, clicking the hammer back into place.

 

“That’s… good. I’m Eric.” Eric turned back to the storage room, breaking his pistol open to remove the shell so he could put both away. After a moment he heard the clattering of beads as Jack followed him into the room. There was a brief pause in his footsteps and the overhead light clicked on, and then Jack strode purposefully over. He stopped very close to Eric, presumably so he could loom over him. His voice still simmered with anger, but it wasn’t as intense as it had been.

 

“Give it back.”

 

Eric stowed his pistol and started going through his pack, responding without acknowledging Jack’s attempts at intimidation.

 

“You know; it’s probably for the best that I took it.”

 

“I seriously doubt that.”

 

“Well you shouldn’t; because now we have two of them.” Eric turned and presented both journals with a flourish and a smirk. The astonished look on Jack’s face was _very_ gratifying.

 

“Where did you get that?”

 

“I stole it, of course. It’s late, so I’m only going to tell this story once. You can hear it when I tell Katya.”

 

Eric shoved both journals into Jack’s chest and walked around him into the kitchen. He paused by the jumble of boxes on the stove-top.

 

“Which one of these did she send you to get?” He looked over his shoulder at Jack, who was distractedly leafing through the second journal. Eric thought for a moment that he might have mollified the man, but when he looked up the glare was still in full effect. Jack muttered his reply before stalking into the living room.

 

“The spotted black cap.”

 

Eric grimaced at the mere mention of the stuff; the mushroom concoction was far cheaper than light-grown tea or coffee and Katya swore by it as a stimulant. She was also completely unbothered by the terrible taste; Eric hated it, but he dutifully retrieved one of the disposable bags and stored the rest of the boxes back in their cabinet. He clicked on the electric stove-top and moved the already full kettle to the burner. As he worked he could overhear the conversation in the living room.

 

“Your student is back. He’s the one who robbed us.”

 

“Is that so?” Katya’s reply was studiously even.

 

“You got it back? That’s great!” Eric found that he was glad that he would get a chance to actually meet Jack’s friend. He, at least, was much more enthusiastic at this turn of events than Jack had been. Shitty chuckled before continuing.

 

“It’s actually kind of funny that it was him.”

 

There was a long pause before Jack spoke into the silence, accusingly.

 

“You knew it was him when I described him to you.”

 

“I may have _suspected_.” Katya’s tone was placating. It wasn't a lie.

 

 “Yet you said nothing.”

 

“You said yourself that it was dark, and I know how fallible human perception can be. I have seen it a hundred times. Suggesting that they might be the same person could color your recollection, making it a fact in your mind. If he returned without the book, it would set us at odds before we even began and Setarra would kill us all. No. This was the best way.”

 

“I’ve had just about all I can stand of people withholding information from me for my own good.”

 

Eric had to admit; that was a sentiment he could sympathize with. Katya was great, but she liked her secrets. Most of what Eric knew, or suspected, about her life before Eric came into the picture was gleaned from her belongings and who her contacts were. Eric often thought that this was yet another aspect of his training—learning to draw conclusions from scant clues was a useful skill for a Lurk. Eric wondered if his reluctance to be open with the entire Samwell crew about who he was and what he could do was just as much of a legacy of Katya’s teaching as his skill with a lock pick. It was a troubling thought.

 

 _At least I have Lardo. I don’t think Katya has anyone._ Certainly no one Eric knew.

 

“Watcha got there Jackie?”

 

“It’s another one of my father’s journals. Katya’s apprentice stole it.”

 

Shitty let out a low whistle.

 

“That’s a lucky break if I ever saw one.”

 

“Can you tell when it was from?” Katya’s tone would read as mild curiosity on anyone else, but Eric knew that she was rapt with attention.

 

“The last entry is dated around the time he disappeared.”

 

A number of things clicked into place for Eric upon hearing that. Jack and Shitty had been on the rooftop looking for signs of a ‘him’, presumably Jack’s father. This also gave an explanation to Jack’s reckless attempts to attune to the well in the courtyard, as well as his agitation during their exchange a few minutes prior. Eric suspected that some of Jack’s apparent arrogance might be desperation, and he regretted that circumstances had set them at cross purposes the way they had.

 

Eric was startled out of his introspection when the kettle whistled, and he took a mug off the hook on the wall, filled it with hot water and plunked the tea bag into it. He turned off the stove, moved the kettle to a cool burner and then headed into the living room.

 

The center of the room was dominated by two leather couches that faced each other with a low rectangular table in between them. To the left was the empty hearth, beside which was a tall wingback chair. Off to the right was a circular table where Eric and Katya usually ate meals. The walls were lined with shelves and cabinets containing books and curiosities from all over the Empire. The room was warmly lit by electric light fixtures centered over both tables as well as a variety of lamps scattered around the room.

 

Jack was rigidly seated on the couch that was furthest from the kitchen and Shitty was sprawled out next to him, one foot propped on the table. Katya was in her usual place by the hearth with her cane close at hand. All three looked up when he entered the room; Katya with a small smile, Shitty with open curiosity and Jack with a disapproving glare.

 

Eric vaulted over the back of the closest couch without spilling a drop of the hot tea, just because he could, and walked over to hand it to Katya. She made a shooing motion with her right hand.

 

“It’s for you.”

 

Eric grimaced.

 

“I hate this stuff.”

 

“Jack’s wound is cursed, and it’s a nasty one. You need to be fresh if you’re going to break it without any accidents.”

 

Eric opened his mouth to protest that he _was_ fresh, but his body decided to betray him and he yawned instead. Katya quirked an amused eyebrow at him and continued.

 

“Did you have to use the Veil?”

 

“Just once.” Eric turned to take his seat on the unoccupied couch when Shitty bounced to his feet and stuck out his hand with a somewhat manic but genuine looking smile. He certainly seemed at ease—he had removed his jacket, unbuttoned his shirt and rolled up the sleeves, displaying runic tattoos on his forearms.

 

“Shitty Knight, pleased to meet you. This is Jack Zimmermann.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at Jack, who seemed to be purposefully ignoring everything other than the journal open in his hands.

 

Eric took his hand and endured a very vigorous handshake.

 

“Eric Bittle, and we already made our introductions.”

 

“…at gunpoint,” Jack muttered darkly.

 

Shitty’s eyes widened fractionally, but he looked more amused than offended on his friend’s behalf. He winked at Eric and shot him with finger guns.

 

“Pretty handy with that pistol. That was some nice shooting earlier.”

 

“Thanks. I was a little lucky.” Eric’s smile was sincere, and he half wondered if he was being flirted with. “Quick thinking with the shoe. Throwing it, I mean.”

 

“Desperate times, desperate measures. I’m sure you understand.” Shitty turned and plopped himself back onto the couch right next to Jack, and slung his hand across the back. Jack, surprisingly, seemed to tolerate this. Eric settled onto the opposite couch, and blew on his steeping tea to cool it down.

 

“So…” Katya said into the silence. “Tell us what you did tonight.”

 

“I’ll start from the beginning, so you’ve got the context.” Eric launched into the story of the Cross Boys—how they went from an exclusive club for self-proclaimed gentlemen to a demon worshipping cult, and how this brought them into conflict with the Samwell Gang. He glossed over the series of scores that led up to the group being dissolved and its members expelled from Charterhall University, and explained everyone’s surprise that the Cross Boys had stuck together and set up shop in a manor in Six Towers. He touched on Johnson’s beating as the motivation for tonight’s burglary and then got down to the details of what he had seen and done in Scurlock Manor that night, reluctantly sipping his tea as he spoke. Katya had trained him to be able to notice and recall the smallest details of what he experienced. The only thing he left out of his recitation was the fact that he shared the young cult leader's ability to see in the dark, and his suspicions about what that might mean. By the end, the tea was drunk and Eric had stopped yawning. Even Jack was paying attention, though Eric couldn’t guess what he might be thinking.

 

Katya limited her commentary to a single disapproving click of her tongue when Eric admitted to his carelessness with Johnson’s spirit mask, but her eyes showed approval by the end.

 

“You did well. That journal could very well save us all.”

 

“Does this mean you’ve finally decided to let me in on everything that happened six months ago?” Eric didn’t bother trying to hide the bitterness in his voice.

 

“Your friends are setting themselves up for a conflict with Setarra. I know you Eric, there is no way I can keep you from being involved now.”

 

“I would have liked to be involved _before_ you almost died.”

 

Katya didn’t seem to have a reply to that, or at least not one she wanted to say in front of their guests. They lapsed into a tense silence and exchanged pointed looks. The clock on the mantelpiece chimed one thirty in the morning, and Eric broke off the staring contest and deflated a bit.

 

“It’s late. How about I help Jack with his problem and we pick up this discussion in the morning?”

 

Katya nodded her assent and Jack shifted on the couch, drawing their attention.

 

“You’re really stronger than Katya?” Jack sounded doubtful.

 

“Not… exactly.” Eric shared a questioning look with Katya.

 

There was a limit on how much ghost field energy a person could safely channel, which was partly innate but could be enhanced by regular practice. Jack was right to be skeptical that Eric could be more powerful than Katya, simply due to the difference in their ages. The truth of the matter was worse; Eric’s growth had been stunted by whatever happened to him when he was thirteen, and he was no stronger now than he had been when he started training seven years ago.

 

This was a problem, because removing curses and wards the usual way was partly about matching power for power. The dispeller would shape an energy construct identical to the one to be destroyed, except with an inverted energy flow. Then they would then carefully merge the two, annihilating both.

 

When a Whisper was faced with a ward or curse that was placed by someone stronger than them (or by multiple people pooling their power), they had a few options; push themselves beyond their safe limit and suffer the consequences, combine their efforts with allies, or try to gradually bleed off energy with multiple lower power mergings. The last was particularly tricky, as any malformations or misalignment could damage the structure of the ward. Damaged to the point of unravelling, even simple wards like the one on Johnson’s spirit mask could produce violent and unpredictable effects as they collapsed. 

 

Under no circumstances would a trained Whisper deliberately damage the structure of an energy construct like the curse currently affecting Jack.

 

Eric planned on slicing it to ribbons—this might prove to be a sticking point.

 

Jack had called lightning in their earlier confrontation with Setarra; that alone signified that he was a Whisper of serious skill and dedication. There was no way Eric was going to be able to hide the true nature, and potential danger, of what he was about to attempt. Eric supposed he had better be upfront about it, then.

 

“I don’t need to be stronger than her, because I’m going to break the curse. Literally. Cut it to pieces.”

 

Eric expected shock or outrage from Jack, but he merely leaned forwards with interest and delivered yet another intense stare. This one seemed… hungry.

 

“You’re speaking of disintegration.”

 

It was news to Eric that his technique had an official name (or an official anything, except an official warning not to try and do it) but there was no way he was letting onto that fact, so he just nodded.

 

As soon as Jack had mentioned disintegration, Shitty perked up from his slouch and now looked slightly panicked.

 

“Woah! Hey! Isn’t that like, insanely dangerous?” He turned an imploring look on Jack, “Didn’t some people here make sincere promises to stop trying to do that?”

 

Jack ignored his friend. "I've long thought that disintegration should be possible, despite what everyone says. My own experiments were... inconclusive."

 

Shitty let out an aggravated huff, "Inconclusive?! They almost concluded with you getting yourself killed. You're not trying this!"

 

After nearly an hour of glares and grimaces, Shitty’s comment elicited a genuine mischievous smile from Jack. Eric was suddenly and viscerally aware of the fact that Jack looked like a marble statue of an ancient hero come to life, and that Eric had just signed himself up to spend a protracted amount of time getting up close and personal with the man. Jack’s tone was just as playful as his grin.

 

“But Shits, I’m not going to be the one doing it. If you want to negotiate promises about not having it done _to_ me, we can talk later.”

 

Shitty rolled his eyes, but persisted.

 

“Can’t we go find some other Whispers and do this the normal way?”

 

Katya interjected.

 

“Not Whispers that I trust with Jack, or that would trust each other. Time is also a factor; the curse activates to cause intense pain when Jack attempts to attune, but even in its inactive state it is damaging his body. We only waited this long for Eric’s tea to freshen him up.”

 

“Fine.” Shitty fell back on the couch with his arms crossed in obvious frustration.

 

“I want to watch.” Jack tried to angle his head so that he could get a clear look at his injury, but it was too awkward. “Do you have a mirror I could use? I need to get my spirit mask as well.”

 

“I have a mirror.” Katya stood and headed to her room, leaning heavily on her cane as she went. Jack headed towards one of the guest rooms, and Eric went back through the kitchen to get his own spirit mask, which would be necessary to actually see the curse well enough to break it.

 

Every spirit mask was unique and crafted by hand, and it was customary for them to be frightening in aspect. Supposedly this warded away evil spirits, but Eric suspected it was just because Whispers liked to be dramatic. Eric’s was soft grey leather harvested from the Deathlands that he had painstakingly embroidered with the image of a rabbit’s skull; from the front, it looked like his eyes stared out of the skull’s vacant sockets. Once enchanted and bound to its user, a spirit mask would develop an additional superficial magical quirk, like changing the wearer’s voice when worn; Eric’s caused his shadow to grow rabbit ears that twitched and moved on their own.

 

Eric carefully tied the mask around his head, but left it pushed up on his forehead for now and made his way back to the living room. Jack had emerged and was currently bent over, examining something on the wall. Eric moved closer and saw that he had his mask on and was examining the ward that controlled some of the apartment’s defenses. Jack spoke without turning.

 

“I recognize Pritchard’s two state toggle, but whatever it is controlling is quite unusual.”

 

Eric supposed it couldn’t hurt to show off a little bit, so he brushed his hand against the ward. A solid steel plate materialized in the doorway, blocking that part of the apartment off. Jack started backwards initially, but then reached out and brushed his hand against the steel, as if to check if it was real.

 

“It’s cold. Was it in the ghost field?”

 

“Yep. I only know how to send myself across, Katya did all the fortifications.” Eric touched the ward again, and the plate vanished with a crackle.

 

“Fascinating.”

 

Jack turned and looked at Eric, who was startled a bit by what he saw. Jack’s spirit mask covered the top part of his face, and was made of a blue metal so dark it almost looked black, and was patterned and fringed with feathers. His eyes were what unsettled Eric; they looked like those of a falcon, except blue instead of yellow. His pupils were impossibly huge, and his iris stretched almost to the edge of his eye. Eric had thought Jack’s stares were intense before, but this was a bit much. The steady tapping of Katya’s cane signaled her return, and Jack and Eric turned to move back to the center of the room.

 

“Jack, sit there on the couch. Eric, pull up a chair.” Katya commanded and they obeyed, moving into position. Jack leaned back on the couch and positioned the elegant hand mirror so that he could see his injured shoulder clearly. If he was nervous at all about going through something potentially deadly, he was doing a good job of hiding it. Still, Eric had to ask.

 

“Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

 

“It’s not a problem that you haven’t seen this particular curse before?” Maybe he was a _little_ nervous, Eric decided.

 

“Not really, it just means that it will take longer. That’s the main drawback to this—it takes time.”

 

“How long?”

 

“Let’s see...”

 

Eric, moved his mask into place and blinked a few times as everything came into focus. Eric had been half worried that Jack’s shirtless… everything, would be distracting but that was before he was confronted with the searing _wrongness_ of the curse. It was about the size of a grapefruit and looked like some kind of parasitic jellyfish that had sunk its tentacles deep into Jack’s body. It pulsed with obvious malice in time with Jack’s breathing, and Eric could immediately see why Katya had dismissed trying to find other Whispers to remove it—Eric didn’t think Katya plus every trained practitioner in the Samwell Gang would be enough to remove this curse in one go.

 

It was also hellishly complicated; a quick count showed that it had elevenfold symmetry—Eric had never met a anyone that worked with anything more intricate than sevenfold. Katya had said that it was designed to cause pain when Jack attuned, and Eric could see how it was tied into Jack’s spirit so that it would use his own strength against him. Eric dimly recalled that Jack had endured the stab wound to his shoulder with a grunt, but had screamed and collapsed when he tried to blast the demon with lightning a second time. Eric was amazed he hadn’t passed out.

 

Despite all of that—the intricacy, the fact that it was placed by something as legendary as a demon and the way it fed off of Jacks own power, Eric was confident. It was the nastiest curse he had ever seen, but it would have flaws he could exploit.

 

“It’ll take me two… maybe three hours. But I can do it.” Eric met Jack’s otherworldly eyes and he tried to project the confidence he felt. Eric couldn’t tell if Jack felt reassured.

 

“Could someone get me another cup of tea?” Eric did a couple of stretches where he sat, in preparation for being hunched over for several hours.

 

“I’m on it.” Shitty, who had been fidgeting with poorly contained nervousness, shot up off the couch and made his way to the kitchen.

 

“Let’s get started.”

 

For the second time that night, Eric opened himself to the thrumming energy of the ghost field, allowing it wash over him. Eric was prepared to ignore the figments of his and Katya’s life that would appear when he attuned, but he wasn’t ready for the sheer foulness that radiated off the curse. He wasn’t sure he could articulate how the way it buzzed against his mind was somehow _wrong,_ but he felt that wrongness all the same. Part of him recoiled at the thought of actually interacting with it, but that was what he was going to do.

 

Very carefully, Eric imagined plucking the tiniest bit of the ghost field he could between his fingers. A blue mote of energy, separated from the rest of the field by his will, shined gently in air in front of him. Carefully he imagined pulling on that mote and twisting it and gradually it extruded into a long slender thread, no thicker than one of his hairs, which he coiled in the air between himself and Jack. Eric made it look easy, but creating this thread of power was one of the trickiest parts of the whole operation. Satisfied with his work, he let out a breath that bloomed frostily in the close air of the apartment.

 

Eric became aware that Shitty was standing next to him, and he took the detestable tea from him and sipped from it.

 

“We’re going to use that thread to probe the curse for flaws. This is… going to take a while.”

 

Eric grasped the end of the thread with his mind and moved it so the tip gently brushed against the crown of the curse, near where all eleven sections joined together in a complicated knot. The presence he felt from the curse abruptly changed from an unpleasant buzzing to a painful screech, the sound and physical sensation of drawing your fingernails down a chalkboard at the same time. Jack visibly reacted, jerking slightly, so Eric pulled back.

 

“Did that hurt?”

 

“Not exactly. It just surprised me. Does that usually happen?”

 

“No. It might be because of how the curse is feeding on your energy to strengthen itself. Do you want me to stop?”

 

“No, it’s fine. I can take it.”

 

Eric bent himself back to the task of feeling for the weak points in how the resonance fluctuated when he touched the thread to the curse, but the peculiarities continued. It seemed the curse was so virulent that it corroded his thread where he touched it. After about an hour the thread had grown so short that he had to stop and create another one. He reached for his cup to drink more tea but found that it was empty. Eric glanced around and noticed that Shitty was sleeping fitfully on the couch next to Jack, and Katya had returned to her chair and was paging through the Zimmermann journals. He glanced back at Jack and found that he was staring back at him. Eric tried to muster a cheerful smile, but suspected he only managed a weary one.

 

“Doing all right?” He asked.

 

Jack just nodded somberly at him and directed his gaze back to the mirror, which let him observe Eric’s work. Eric took that as a sign to resume his probing. It was long, tedious work, and over the next several hours he had to create thread twice more. Eventually he had scrutinized every millimeter of the curse and figured out how to break it apart harmlessly. The corrosive nature of the curse was going to pose a problem though; normally he could take his time wrapping the thread around the weak points in the construct, but the tainted energy of this curse would quickly eat through the thin thread.

 

_I guess I’ll just have to be fast._

 

Eric spooled out a thread of power one last time and began to reshape it into intricate designs, trying to limber his mind up after the long tedious process of analyzing the curse. He was also showing off a bit, if he was being honest. Eric didn’t have the strength to blast his way out of a wet paper bag, but his fine control when working with constructs as delicate as his thread was unmatched. Jack seemed to respect skill in the arcane arts, and despite their rocky start Eric found that he wanted that respect.

 

Eric paused with the thread poised over the curse, mentally tracing the path it would take. Then he struck, blindingly fast, weaving the thread in and around its intricate structure. The jarring sensation he had experienced before was nothing next to what he felt now, with the thread touching the curse all along its length.

 

In the span of a breath, his work was complete and the thread was wound all through the curse, from where it penetrated into Jack’s body all the way to its pulsating crown. Eric gave a sharp tug to both ends of the thread and the curse bulged and deformed, almost turning inside out before the thread sliced through it in a dozen places simultaneously. The pieces of the curse drifted away from Jack and disintegrated with a faint popping noise. The only thing that remained was a faint acrid smell in the air.

 

Eric fell back against his chair, closed his eyes and finally let go of his connection to the ghost field. He was exhausted, despite having drunk the disgusting mushroom tea. His eyes snapped open when Jack’s hand came down on his shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze. Their eyes met, and Jack gave him a small smile.

 

“Nice work, Bittle.”

 

Jack stood and began to shake Shitty awake so that they could retire to their rooms. His friend awoke with a start, and Jack reassured him in a low voice that the process was complete.

 

“It’s finished?” Katya’s voice was tired as well, but her pride in her student was plain. Eric replied with a nod as he yawned.

 

“Good. Go to bed.” Katya stood and began making her down the hallway to her room.

Eric stood and stretched, and turned the lights out as he left the living room. He couldn’t decide which was more dangerous: Jack’s glare or his smile.


End file.
